7 awesome shows you probably missed
1. Late on a rainy Monday evening in June, a Houston, Texas-based rock duo called Female Demand played a viciously aggressive and excellent set of fuzzed-out noise rock for the Tea Bazaar crew. Jonathan Perez and Bradley Muñoz, a duo reminiscent of Lightning Bolt and Wavves, were good sports about the low turnout, thrashing as heavily as they would for a packed house, and semi-sarcastically inviting the four of us to visit their merch table after the show.
2. Dan Deacon threw one of the best parties of the year when he played the Jefferson in September. “Deacon’s brilliance as a performer is that he’s able to take that sense of community with him everywhere he goes,” said C-VILLE’s James Ford. “Building it from scratch in a new town on each night, starting over at the beginning of every performance.”
3. Girl Talk took the show outside for a Pavilion date in September and delivered the goods in an aerobically charged, frenetic, laptop performance full of props and fist pumps.
4. Jonathan Wilson left his native North Carolina for California and immersed himself in the Laurel Canyon sound, which he has perfected to the respect of musical luminaries like Jackson Browne, Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy and Dawes. The new master of folk rock played a solo show at the Southern in May to showcase his latest release, Gentle Spirit.
5. While Bruce Springsteen was drawing a crowd over at JPJ, a Baltimore-based band called Horse Lords were quietly setting up two drum sets, a guitar, and a saxophone at the Tea Bazaar. The first 20 minutes of the set was euphorically excellent, a kind of grooving, minimalist art-rock inspired as much by Terry Riley and Steve Reich as by CAN and the Talking Heads. The Mingsleys wrapped up the night with a killer turn-all-the-amps-up rendition of Spacemen 3’s “Sound of Confusion,” which has always been a personal favorite.
6. The United Nations of Comedy series brings together a diverse, cosmopolitan group of talented comedians from around the country, and has built a path for big market comedy to come through on a regular basis.
7. Some of the finest theater in the world played virtually on the Downtown Mall in the Paramount’s National Theatre Live series. Productions from the acclaimed British group included Danny Boyle’s Frankenstein starring Benedict Cumberbatch and Jonny Lee Miller, who scored best actor Olivier awards for alternating the lead role between the doctor and the creature each night.
1 website worth revisiting
It’s not unknown to us that c-ville.com 1.0 was frustratingly dysfunctional. But what was once an unsearchable portal of despair is now a magical, user-friendly destination. Since the redesign in August, we’ve been learning all kinds of new buzzwords, like “SEO” and “wysiwyg,” laser-focused on improving your experience as a reader in the digital age. We rotate our content twice daily and include exclusive features you won’t find in print. So thanks for coming back and trying us again. Leave a comment if you feel like it—we’ve made that part easier, too.